Gillian Anderson - A Dream of Ice

He reached out to pull her in but she backed away. She had noticed that Arfa was sniffing Ben’s ankle—the same way the beagle, Jack London, had done in the Pawars’ apartment.

“Cai?” Ben said.

She shook her head several times. Not here. Not the same situation. Not in my home.

“Cai!” Ben said more insistently.

She motioned him in, shut the door, and launched into a description of Jacob’s episode, speaking so quickly even the UN interpreter could barely follow. Finally, he interrupted her.

“What were the words he said?”

Caitlin thought back. “ En. Dovi. I think they were two words. He struggled a few times to get them out.”

“Probably just fragments,” Ben said. “He didn’t get to finish.”

“Right. I should have let him just scream it all out.”

“I didn’t say that,” Ben said soothingly. “Where is he now, can I see him?”

“Why?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you,” he said. “More information, he may say something else—I don’t know.”

Reluctantly, she walked him down the hall. When she opened the bedroom door, Jacob was visible in the bed, his stuffed whale cast to one side, his fingers no longer in his mouth. For a moment there was only the sound of his deep sleep breathing.

No, it wasn’t just his breathing. There was a sound like… wind? Breakers on a beach? It was distant and indistinct but it was not his breath.

She tugged the sleeve of Ben’s jacket and they backed into the hall. Caitlin shut the door and waited until she was back in the living room to speak again.

“It’s Galderkhaan,” she said. “I have to go back and I haven’t been able to. But with you here maybe I can try using the cazh .”

“Whoa,” Ben said, cutting her off. “The chant you went into at the UN? The ritual that talked about you going ‘Hundreds of feet in the air, I want to rise with the sea, with the wind’?”

“Yes.”

He looked at her with surprise and she started when she realized why. He had quoted it in Galderkhaani and she had understood him. The sound of those very elements seemed to creep in around them. Behind them the cat was curled under a chair. Its fur rippled faintly.

“Holy shit,” Ben said.

“Yeah. There is something going on,” she said. “Do you disagree?”

He shook his head.

“All right, then. At the very least, going back will help me to establish whether the souls are somehow still in this goddamn spin cycle, whether they’re still trying to use that final cazh .”

“I’ll be damned if you’ll do that, Cai,” Ben said. “Wherever it took you, it’s a dangerous tool.”

“No, this is perfect, Ben. You’ve seen the process, you’ll know if you need to stop it. And you’re familiar with everything Maanik went through so if Jacob wakes up, if he—” She stopped herself. “If he needs anything, you’ll be here to give it to him.”

“And you? What happens to Jacob if you get lost in Galderkhaan or inside your head somewhere?”

“Inside… my head ?” Caitlin’s fury flared out of her. “You’re still not convinced any of this is happening, are you?”

“Something is going on, I just don’t know what!”

“Didn’t you just say you got a ‘ping’ from me, miles away!”

“Maybe it’s ESP, or a strong sixth-sense animal instinct, absolutely worth exploring with controls … but not something to jump headlong into. And I have to say it: why are you convinced this stuff is absolutely, no-question, for real? You’re the psychiatrist, the scientist! We had the language, Maanik’s fits, the power of suggestion they created—”

“No,” she said. “Ben Moss, don’t you dare do this to me.”

“Do what, exactly? Caution you? Think, Cai! You used that chant as a last resort to save a life. Maanik was literally generating fire in her body.”

“Another strong indicator that this is real, wouldn’t you say?”

“Pyrokinesis, spontaneous combustion, I don’t know,” he said. “ Please listen. Jacob is down the hall, asleep. For right now, he’s perfectly okay. And from what you described, whatever he experienced bore no resemblance to any of the other kids’ experiences. Besides, you can’t know for sure that going back won’t exacerbate the problem. Tell me one reason you should go jumping into some self-induced hypnotic state that may not have an exit strategy!”

“Because Jacob wasn’t here, Ben. For a couple seconds it wasn’t him. That happened with Maanik too, you saw it. And let’s not forget yesterday, at the school, he went away somehow.”

“But what he did was totally different.”

“No.” She pointed at the almond milk still covering the table. “It was violent and angry.”

“Show me.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to see what you saw.”

With a cringe, Caitlin sat in Jacob’s chair. She mimed the dropping of the glass, then re-created the two fists in the air, the arc of them downward. “That’s when he hit the table,” she said. “It seemed to jar him out of the episode.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t see anger there, Cai. What I see is frustration, pure and simple.” He read her doubting face, motioned for her to stand. He sat in her place and re-created the sequence. “Which way do you see it, now that it isn’t Jacob?”

She half-turned, nodded, then released a huge breath. “Okay, not anger. Not wrath. Something more like… disappointment? Resignation about something ? I… I don’t know but he was affected by something.”

“Regardless, not worth risking your mind or life for. Not yet.”

She gazed at him mutely and at last shook her head no. “But I have to do something, this is Jacob! So what the hell am I going to do, Ben?”

“I don’t know yet but you can’t go about it like this,” he said.

“I know, but I am so angry,” she told him as she flopped onto the sofa. “And my apartment’s already clean, so housework therapy is out.”

“Well, my apartment’s not.”

She smacked him in the arm.

“Not bad.”

“What?”

“If my UN stress counselor were here, he’d tell you to throw a couple punches at a pillow.”

She made a face. “Bad Psychiatry 101.”

“Mommy?”

Caitlin’s head snapped toward the hallway. Jacob was standing there, smiling, with Arfa prancing toward him. He waved at his mother.

“Hey,” she said, forcing a smile as she signed. “What happened to your nap?”

“It’s done,” he said, brushing his hands against each other.

“Did you have any dreams?”

“Yes,” he gestured excitedly. “I was flying.”

“Sounds fun,” Caitlin said, still pretending to be calm.

“ Tawazh! ” he spoke aloud as he ran forward.

Ben and Caitlin exchanged quick looks. Ben was visibly surprised to actually hear the Galderkhaani word, to know that the boy wasn’t saying “towers.” She hugged him and he hugged her back in a long “normal” embrace.

“He said it,” Ben whispered. “You didn’t imagine it.”

Caitlin nodded over Jacob’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

“And it didn’t come from me or from you.”

She shook her head.

Ben stayed where he was, studying Caitlin. He noticed that her eyes were wet, and that not all of her tears were from relief.

Mikel flung himself back against the lava tube, trying to keep distance between himself and the red-orange flame. A lone tendril of fire reached along the stone ceiling and for a moment dipped toward his boots, then it vanished and the echoes of the cracking boom faded to silence.